Pope Francis on Fr Paolo Dall’Oglio’s vocation to joy

Pope Francis

To flip through these pages in which Father Paolo Dall’Oglio speaks of the Rule of the monastic community of Deir Mair Musa cannot but stir emotions;  he recounts the profound intentions that had moved him to breathe new life into the very ancient Syriac monastery, dating back to the 6th century A.D., and recover the great spiritual tradition of the desert fathers, at the same time giving it a new sense of a witness for Christ’s love in the Arab-Muslim context.

Mar Musa al-Habashi (the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian) was his creation, conceived with so much love: the conversations with his brethren - on the significance of the Rule - convey great passion. A free spirit, who rejected formalism and phrases of circumstance; sometimes extreme, as he acknowledges with a dose of self-irony. These conversations also reveal the depth of his vision, the wellspring of his commitment: “A monastery in the desert,” he explains with an evocative image, “is a light that can be seen from afar, it is a stop along the way, a station of a pilgrimage; for us, it is like the oak of Mamre where God becomes our guest and we become His guests.

The cover of the book , with a preface by Pope Francis, that collects writings by Fr Paolo Dall'Oglio

Ten years have passed since we lost all news of Father Paolo. With great courage, he had sought contact in northern Syria with the kidnappers of two bishops, one Syrian Orthodox and the other Greek Orthodox, who had been abducted a few weeks earlier. Then came the darkness. His family and friends have so far even been denied the act of mercy of a returned body, upon which to weep and give a dignified burial. We have no words to express this pain and we are unable to give a name and a reason for the hatred of his possible persecutors. We do know, however, what he would not have wanted: to blame Islam as such for his mysterious and dramatic disappearance; to renounce that passionate dialogue in which he always believed with the aim of “redeeming Islam and Muslims”, as one of the precepts of his Rule states. On this point, Father Paolo was very clear. He did not ignore the problems, he listened to the stories of the suffering of his Arab Christian brothers, the Copts, the Chaldeans, the Maronites, the Assyrians... But he felt that his and his monastic community's specific vocation was the path of fraternity. "Therefore," he said, "whatever the situation, and taking into account the worst that may happen, there remains, for those Christians who are called by God, the role of love for all Muslims".

It was not a matter of political tactics but the gaze of a missionary who experiences, first of all on himself, the power of Christ's mercy. A gaze that is not fundamentalist, but gentle, full of that hope that does not disappoint because it rests in God. Always open to a smile. So it is moving to reread today some prophetic passages of a text that so closely resembles a spiritual testament. In particular, when Father Paul speaks of the day of his final offering for Jesus: "I say: our vocation in the Muslim context should be adorned with a laugh of joy. And let the day be a day of joy, God willing, when we taste the final offering for Jesus, and ask for this grace; for it is a grace that no one can attribute to himself".

This is a working translation from the original Italian text.